Considering the wealth of Indians living in the Boston area, you’d expect there to be at least one decent Indian restaurant.  So far in my travels, I have been to every “great” Indian restaurant as deemed by such established food reviewers as the Boston Phoenix, Weekly Dig, and Improper Bostonian (based upon their yearly “Best of” issues).  However, not one restaurant recommended was very good or authentic Indian food.  Kenny, who is Indian, told me that the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (a.k.a. Hare Krishnas: the hippie white people dressed as if they were Indian) has a bi-weekly prayer service followed by a free vegetarian meal.  So, I decided to try out the Hare Krishna Temple to see how good the food there was.

I ended up going with Kenny, who wanted to go early to get a decent spot to sit down during the prayer service.  I don’t know if he’s very religious, I don’t believe in organized religion, so I don’t really subscribe to things like prayer service.  But if you’ve never been to a Hare Krishna temple, it’s an experience to be had.  Your first question is probably “Do I need to be Indian to go to this temple?”  No, there were plenty of non-Indian people there (white, black, non-descript ethnicities even!), so you’ll feel welcome.  Second, everyone is very friendly (as is the case with most churches/temples/synagogues I’ve been to), so you won’t feel weird being there.  But do expect a lot of singing and dancing for 45 min to an hour.  People really got into the music, there was a circle dance and conga line formed (of sorts), so expect a lot of fervor.  If you want, you can just stand in the back quietly and cross your arms over your chest (or even clap if you feel so inclined).

After the service, a line forms up front to get the food, and it is served out by a group of mostly women that cook every week.  The food is all fresh, fairly hot (they probably have to reheat it just before serving), and really tasty.  I am told by Kenny that the menu changes every time, and on this occasion I got a plate of rice, kasseri (a cream of wheat Indian dessert), pakora, potato and paneer curry (not very spicy), and tamarind sauce.  In theory these meals could be vegan, but they are not because it is obvious that they use a lot of ghee (clarified butter) in cooking.

You also get a small cup of rice pudding (payasum), which I normally don’t like, but they used really rich cream to make this payasum, which made it amazing.

Ultimately, the food at the Hare Krishna temple is without a doubt the best Indian food I’ve ever had in Boston.  For one, it’s free, although you do have to sit through a prayer service to get it.  Actually, you technically don’t have to come for the prayer service, you can just show up an hour after the service begins and get in line for the food.  But if you might feel weird coming to the prayer service, you’ll probably also feel weird just showing up and taking the free food.  I equate the food at the Hare Krishna temple to going to an Indian friend’s house for food.  If you just showed up and ask for a meal, they’ll probably cook one for you, regardless of your relationship (Indians are the most hospitable of all peoples in my opinion).  But it’ll be awkward unless you bring something or do something in return for it.

I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to convert people to Hare Krishna, I would do the same review if a mosque, synagogue, or church had a free meal that was equally amazing after a service.  I believe that religion is something that is best kept to oneself, but a delicious free meal is something that you should tell the whole world about!  But please, don’t exploit this opportunity to the point that they have to start charging for the meal.  I give the Hare Krishna four and a half cheese sandwiches (can’t give five because they are not vegan friendly).

ISKCON Boston
72 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02116 
(617) 247-8611

Facebook really doesn’t do much for us as a society, despite the amount of time people devote to it.  However, I did discover an amazing place as a function of Facebook stalking a girl I barely know.  This girl went to DC to a place called the Mansion on O Street which serves a tea service, where you get tea and an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet.  Now, I have explicitly expressed my disdain for buffets numerous time on this (and other) forums, but when you have an all-you-can-eat DESSERT buffet, then all rules have been broken.

The neat thing about the Mansion on O Street is that it is basically an old building that functions as a flea market/hotel.  So people come and can buy kitsch that is on the walls or whatever is just hanging around.  Think of it like visiting a very rich friend, and buying the crap he/she has lying around the house.  All the rooms are amazingly decorated and have their own unique themes, which I only discovered as a function of the scavenger hunt option that is available if you book a tea (which is only on Sunday afternoons).  I would say, only book one scavenger hunt per group, because it’s a waste of money otherwise, you’re only paying for a piece of paper.

Anyway, our tea was Forte Tea, which was a brand that I have never actually heard of previously, despite me being a tea enthusiaste.  I was initially shocked and dismayed to find that the Mansion did not have my favorite Earl Grey flavor, and was tempted to say something to our scantily-clad hostess, but I figured that making her dress like a 50’s era cigarette girl was demeaning enough that I decided against it.  I got the English Breakfast tea, which was great, as you’d expect from English Breakfast, but what I thought was neat was the leaf and string attached to the tea pouch was very stiff and rigid, and you could use it to dip the tea up and down without it falling into the tea or getting wet as the tea diffused up the string.  So, that is one perk for Forte Tea.

To say that the dessert spread was impressive would be akin to saying the death total of Russians during World War II was high.  Neither statement really encompasses the true meaning of the experience.  From the chocolate fountain, to the multitude of full-size cakes, to the petite scones, to the blow pops and rice krispie treats (yes, the commercially plastic-wrapped variety).  What blows my mind is that when I explored the Mansion later is that this room is not the only one equipped to fully house a plethora of sweets, there are no less than 3 separate rooms for this purpose!  It amazes me considering the typical girth of Americans that this building is not on the mall with the other parts of the Smithsonian.

For the first round of sweets, I took (clockwise from top right) a chocolate espresso cake, whoopie pie, carrot cake creme pie, date cake, and a chocolate wafer (in the center).  I am giving my own terms to these things, as there was no signage at all saying what was what.  Which was unfortunate, because I was convinced that the date cake was tiramasu (which is completely different!) before biting into it.  Surprisingly, despite the aesthetic appeal of the desserts, they didn’t really taste very good.  The only one I enjoyed was the chocolate espresso cake and the chocolate wafer.  The carrot cake creme pie was very heavy, as was the whoopie pie.  Halfway through this plate, I fully realized my mortality, and that I frankly just couldn’t eat this many sweets.  When I was young, I could eat half a night’s haul of halloween candy with no remorse.  Now that I’m almost thirty, I have to show a little more self-respect (just a little).  After pathetically only eating half the food, I made an attempt to go for a second round (just because I could, not because I should).

My second plate was a little more sensible, and like that terrible donut blitz I did six-eight months ago, I realized that I needed something savory to balance out that sweetness.  Fortunately, there was a tiny island hidden in the room that had a bowl of fresh veggies, hummus, cheese, and crackers.  It has always amazed me how people could consider cheese and crackers as a dessert option, but after my first plate, nothing seemed more fitting than a plate of cheese and crackers.  I forced myself to try the oreo silk pie, a sliver of actual carrot cake, some caramel corn, a petit lemon scone, and a mint chocolate chip cookie.  Everything on this plate was delicious, I don’t know if it was a function of having a palate cleanser of the hummus, green beans, and carrots.  But, the silk pie was probably the highlight of the dessert buffet for me, with the carrot cake a close second.  The cake on the carrot cake was far more moist than the carrot cake creme pie, which was fortunate that I decided to give the Mansion a second attempt at carrot cakerie.

Overall, the Mansion was a once in a lifetime experience, I learned a lot about myself (that I can’t handle as much dessert as I used to be able to), and it was fun to replace an angel’s flute with a twizzler.  If you’re vegan or celiac, you’re going to have a rough time, as almost everything is unlabeled, and the staff is not very helpful in explaining what is what.  But for lacto-ovo-vegetarians, this place is great, and it’s almost better just to seep in the experience than eat anything.  Though eating is awesome also.  I give it four cheese sandwiches.

Mansion at O Street
2020 O Street Northwest
Washington D.C., DC 20036-5912 
(202) 496-2020

One of the great banes of my childhood was trying to eat food with my hands off of a banana leaf at weddings I would attend. Ultimately, you’ve not experienced true Indian dining unless you’ve eaten on a banana leaf.  There are so many factors to contend with when eating off a banana leaf - liquid running off the leaf, sweet and savory mixing together, and fans blowing the leaf away. These concerns may seem bizarre to you, but you likely eat most of your meals from a ceramic or metal plate (lucky).

My cousin was getting married, and Indian weddings start very early in the morning (6 AM!), so often times they serve breakfast.  A typical south Indian breakfast included a vadai, coconut chutney, pongal, sweet, idli, and sambar (clockwise from far left).  There was also mini-dosas served, but they were too thick for my liking.

If you ever attend an Indian wedding, roughly 50-75% of your time will be spent being asked if you have eaten or want coffee or tea.  If you have any intention of actually watching the wedding take place, you will be woefully disappointed.  A typical Indian lunch begins with you sitting at an empty banana leaf.  Then progressive waves of servers walk by with first curry (potato and beans with purrippu, top left), then random crap that I don’t like (aviyal, moru kazhambu, top middle), raitha, and then finally rice, ghee, purrippu, and sambar.

This wedding was interesting as there were a few items which I’ve never seen before, banana chips and masala vadai (center) are standard, though the ginger paste and the unknown sweet (foreground) were firsts for me.  If anybody has any clue on this sweet (the bride is from Bengal, so this may be a Bengali dish), please comment.  Nobody at the wedding I knew had any idea what this was called.

Finally, more traditional sweets, payisum and a sweet vada.  I never understood why people serve everything all at once, as it’s very common for the sweets to get mixed in with the savory, and turn into a disgusting melange of flavors.  It’s common to eat the sweet before anything else comes (as the sweets come as early as the curries), but I am a sweet after kind of guy.  After all this indulgence, it’s common to have a moru satham course and/or rasam satham course, but I wasn’t able to take any pictures because my hands were quite messy.  So, this’ll have to do.

While in India, I am essentially homebound, partly from the delicious home cooking that I received, and also because outside of my house is a dark, desolate place filled with mosquitos, mysterious pools of manure/trash/blackness, and feral dogs and mendicants.  So, come nighttime, I tend to want to stay at home.  As such, the only dining options available to me are either dosas or whatever my next door neighbor cooks for me.  Thus, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to learn how to make a dosa, which turned out being much harder than I thought.

Every good dosa starts with a good mavu (batter), and this mavu was made by Vidya (so, consider this cooking experience comparable to Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, except I’m way hotter and less blond.  A close approximation of the recipe for making the mavu is the following:

Ingredients:

• Idly rice- 4 cup
• Urad dal(whole round)- 1 cup
• Fenugreek seeds- 1/2 tsp
• Salt - to taste

Recipe:

1. Soak Idly rice, Urad dal and Fenugreek seeds for 4 to 5 hours.
2. Grind the soaked idly rice into a nice batter.
3. Grind the soaked Urad dal and Fenugreek seeds nicely. Use wet grinder or mixie to prepare the batter.
4. Combine the two batters and Salt by hand.
5. Allow the batter to ferment for overnight in a warm place. It may take up to 6 to 8 hours to ferment. Stir it with a ladle after fermentation.You can prepare idly or dosa using this batter.

Once you’ve made the batter, and it’s fermented overnight, you’re ready to make dosas!  There are two important things to keep in mind when making a dosa: pan hotness and mavu thickness.  After the mavu has been fermenting overnight, it gets pretty thick and gummy, so if you try to fry a dosa, it looks like a little pancake turd.  So, it is important to add some extra water; however, you don’t want to add so much that the mavu is too runny to make a good dosa.  This in itself is a difficult feat to master, and I still haven’t gotten the hang of proper mavu consistency.

When heating the pan, you want to make sure that it is very hot.

I wouldn’t recommend the above technique as a hot pan is really hot, and you’ll just get burned.  Perhaps flick some water on the pan and see how quickly it evaporates.  Once the pan is sufficiently hot, you’re ready to add the batter.

I use a rounded ladle to add the mavu, which is a little flatter than your typical ladle, as it allows for better spreading of the dosa.  First add a teaspoon of oil, then put 1-2 ladlefuls of mavu in the center of the pan.  Turn down the heat so that you don’t burn the other side and press the ladle (bottom down) onto the mavu, and move slowly outwards in larger concentric circles (clockwise or counterclockwise).  Once you have a desired dosa diameter, add more oil to the top of the dosa, and around the sides.  Once the oil starts sizzling, you’re ready to start flipping.  Gently put a spatula underneath the dosa, removing it from the pan, and flip it.

Try to flip it into the center of the pan.  But flipping is tough, especially when you’re trying to show off.  Allow it to cook a little bit longer, feel free to check for brownness underneath (I usually have one dark side and one light as a metaphor for racial equality).

Now you’re ready to eat!  Dosa are usually folded in half to allow space for putting mulligapodi (spicy powder), various chutneys, or potato kari.  Really, you can eat dosas with anything your heart desires, as its a fairly ubiquitous dish, but I think if more people start working on dosas, the world will be a better place (primarily because then I can get dosas anywhere).

The proverbial whipping boy of the catering industry would have to be airline food. For decades, standup comedians have relied on this crutch to save their poorly constructed acts. Airline food is indeed terrible, which is what you can expect for food that is kept in terrible conditions and may be stored for several days before actually being served to unsuspecting passengers. Of course, with the rising costs of the airline travel, the continental traveler surprisingly gets a better dining experience, as paying $10 for a Sarah Lee roast beef sandwich necessitates superior cuisine. However, international travel still offers free meals for passengers. So, how does a vegetarian fare in this scenario?

Traditionally, as a vegetarian, you can request a vegetarian meal on international flights, though sometimes this order is not taken down by the airline, or some other error takes place. I personally do not ever request a vegetarian meal, as the vegetarian meal is often inferior to the generic meal with the accoutrements. I always subscribe to getting a lacto-ovo-vegetarian meal, and for some reason, they give me an Indian meal. I don’t know if the airline industry is racially profiling me (considering how the rest of air travel is going, it wouldn’t surprise me), or if an Indian meal is the standard for lacto-ovo-vegetarians.

So, I am traveling to India because I haven’t had malaria in a while, and I am flying on an unnamed German carrier (whose name literally translates to “wing… something”), I had my first leg going from Boston to Frankfurt. I have flown trans-Atlantic flights several times before in my life, and I’ve begun to notice that most airlines (especially Star Alliance ones) always provide a pasta option for their meals. This is a risky gamble, but it pays off in the end. In this case, I got “tomato macaroni with spinach” (according to the flight steward), which was really penne in tomato sauce with a reheated frozen spinach turd topping. This was actually pretty tasty, though the spinach was god-awful.

The meal was served with bread and cheese, a pseudo rosemary focaccia (fauxccacia?).   The bread was so cold that it was hard to taste any flavor.

The usual salad accompaniment was actually topped with shrimp! First of all, I don’t know anybody in their right mind who thinks that ordering seafood on a plane is a good idea. When I think of airline food, probably the last thing I think of is freshness. Fortunately, I recently read an article stating that one should avoid eating salads on airlines as the refrigerators are never cold enough to prevent bacterial contamination. If the bread was any judge of temperature maintenance, I think they keep the food plenty cold.

Finally, I got a chocolate mousse, which was actually pretty tasty. If there’s one thing the Germans know (outside of efficiency), it’s chocolate.

The aforementioned Indian meal was provided on the flight to India, which only had two options – veg or non-veg. I don’t understand who makes the Indian meals, but they evidently think that making the food completely inedibly spicy is the way to go when preparing food. Forutnately, they include a trough of yoghurt to temper the spiciness. I much prefer the bland overcooked pasta to the ridiculously spicy paneer korma and spinach and corn curry, if I had to pick my poison. The last thing you want to experience on a flight is gastric distress, and that’s the only path you can take with the Indian meal.

Overall, the food on airlines for vegetarians is not too shabby, provided you don’t actually get the vegetarian meal. Star Alliance is a good group of airlines to travel with, as they almost always have a vegetarian pasta option. I have flown with them around 20 times since 2000, and not once have I struggled to get a vegetarian pasta. Unfortunately, this did not occur with Air France; the French are notorious anti-vegetarians. If you are vegan, you’re going to have to request something special. And I wish you good luck with that.

The moral of the story, is airline food is terrible. I think we can all agree upon that. However, I applaud Star Alliance for providing a vegetarian option and a non-vegetarian option for most of their flights (at least every flight I’ve been on since 2000). So, I’ll give them three cheese sandwiches for trying.